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WORDS: Kara Chalmers
PICTURES: Whitney Patton
In September, Caitlyn Ryherd, 1,
watched one of her cows give birth
to a calf, a boy, whom she named El
Chupacabra. “It was so cool,” she said.
The cow had walked from her stall several
yards in-to the pasture, stopping under an
oak tree Ryherd’s family calls “the birthing
tree” because it’s been such a popular
spot for mothers in labor.
Caitlyn grabbed her phone and zoomed
in to video, because her mom wasn’t
there, and Caitlyn knew she’d be sorry to
miss it. El Chupacabra is small, maybe
too small to be shown and sold at the
Manatee County Fair next January. But
Caitlyn, her twin sister Alex and her
younger sister Sarala, 11, will train, care
for, and feed the bull calf the way they do
all their steers and heifers which at the
moment total 1, in hopes he’ll make the
fair’s weight requirement.
A Family Affair
Cattle raising is a huge part of the lives
of the Ryherd girls, who attend Palmetto
Charter School. It all started when the
twins were two years old, and the family
had just moved from Kansas back to
Parrish, where their mother Jessica
Ryherd was raised. The house they
bought was three miles from the home
Jessica grew up in a large property
with a house, barn and stalls, all built by
Jessica’s fa-ther, David Bailey. Plus, a cow
pasture, with cattle.
Excited about his first grandchildren,
David bought each of the twins a pony to
house in his barn. Of course, the toddlers
were too young to take care of the ponies,
so they were ultimately sold and replaced
with rabbits. As they got older, the twins
became more and more interested in
the cows their grandpa owned, and the
process by which they were born, bought,
shown, and sold.
When they turned eight, they joined
Manatee County’s H club, called